I just wait for a freeze or BSOD or whatever to happen, and if it doesnt? yey!

So far none yet on my current OC.

It will most likely BSOD and restart.

this is not recommended. if you dont stress test and end up having a unstable overclock, thats when you start to get hard disc errors and windows file corruption.

always test stability.

if you have good cooling on your cpu, worse case scenario is you get a p95 error, or a bsod and a reboot. i leave my rig running blend all time. also, if you use coretemp there is an option to shut the computer down if it hits a certain temp. i have mine set to 90c.

stability testing is required for fine tuning as well. you may have a stable overclock, but you might be able to achieve that same overclock with way less volts.Edited by AliceInChains - 1/28/11 at 7:36pm

you should do at the lease a good LinX or Intel Burn for 1 soild Hour. I never had any OC fail on prime95 that lasted 1 hour on LinX. So I know you have a hour to run a good stable check everyone does let it burn when your eating or something... but You should do the 1 hour test cause most likely you are stable at 3.8Ghz But you should be able to get a 4.0 plus clock. Just focus on 1 hour LinX or Intel Burn runs with max memory. And I think you can't say its good. I always do those then do a prime95 but you should be fine if you don't care to much with a hour

Stress testing doesn't always do the job, I've done 12 hour stress tests only to have a 124 BOSD come up at some random point down the road when I'm running word or somthing.

How could you tell the difference between an unstable overclock, or just another crazy Word glitch, in the first place? I think if it crashed in the middle of some reliable, stable program - blame the overclock. But in any of the lameware that comes with Office, I'd take Office and give the spread to any bookie...